Heavy Stone
by Rachel975
Summary: 'The first time he saw her, he was drunk beyond belief and he thought that she was a hallucination because nobody was actually that colourful.' Haymitch doesn't want to like Effie Trinket, who represents everything about the Capitol he despises, but when she's the only constant in his life, it's hard not to get attached. Pre-Hunger Games Hayffie.
1. Chapter 1

The first time he saw her, he was drunk beyond belief and he thought that she was a hallucination because nobody was actually that colourful. She was wearing turquoise and pink because clashing colours were in fashion in the Capitol that year and Haymitch wondered if there had ever been a more obnoxious outfit. Over the years she would wear a number of similarly horrendous things which gave him a headache, usually because he was already hungover granted but she should have made more of an effort to accommodate that, but he would always remember the outfit from that first reaping as being the worst of the lot.

She hadn't introduced herself to him but she had pulled the names of two twelve year olds out of the bowl of names and the fact she kept smiling through that and made the two crying children shake hands on the stage was enough for him to hate her.

"Effie Trinket." she said to him on the train and he was drunk enough to wonder if she was just garbling noises before he realised that she was telling him her name. "You must be Haymitch." To his credit he had extended his hand to her and given a half-hearted handshake, but that was because the last District 12 escort had been there since he was old enough to remember the Hunger Games and only left because she died last year – the mentors for District 12 did not get promoted – so he wasn't going to try to piss her off deliberately even though she looked like she was incredibly tightly wound and it would be easy. He probably would only need to mention that her pink hair was definitely a wig and she would be shrieking something unintelligible at him. He almost wanted to try, but she hadn't done anything yet and he refused to give her a validation for what she probably already thought about him. "When are you going to start preparing the tributes? I was thinking – and please, let me know if this isn't how you do things – maybe leave them tonight, let them settle, and then tomorrow you can go over strategies and things like that." He wanted to laugh at how naïve she was, wanted to ask if she had ever seen the games, if she realised exactly what he job was now.

"That's not really how I do things." Effie made a little 'oh' sound as though she was interested in hearing his opposing methods. "I usually just leave them to it. They're dead anyway." The shock on her face made him smile.

"I don't think-"

"What good can I do for two twelve year old that look like a strong wind could break them in half?" he snapped at her, not meaning to, but not wanting to have to go through this again. The last escort had been similarly displeased about this, but she had left him to it anyway. "They've never held a weapon before, they're too scared and small to make allies. They'll be dead at the cornucopia." Effie scowled and stormed out of the room. Maybe she'd try and make them likeable for sponsors in the Capitol, but if they couldn't survive the first day then that was completely futile. A sponsor can't remove a knife from your head after all.

And Effie did coach them, or she tried to. Besides being scared, the two children she had reaped were utterly without personalities. At least the little girl was quite sweet looking, the boy would attract no admirers, not in the Capitol. They earned a three and a four in training. Even Effie was surprised they had managed to get any points at all. Once they'd gone to bed, sickeningly pleased with the 'high scores' they had earned, leaving Haymitch trying not to spit his whiskey out in laughter, he was left alone with Effie.

"They're going to die." she said so quietly, and he very nearly thought he'd imagined it. He clapped a hand on her shoulder.

"Finally getting it, sweetheart." He had no sympathy for her. She wasn't the one who was going to die, and it was her own fault for getting overinvolved with these children. If she just ignored them like he did it might be a little easier for her. It was still bad, but it was bearable.

"I don't know why you can't at least try." Effie hissed at him, and he was almost impressed with the little bit of fire she was showing him. So few people in that Capitol managed to show anything like that, so few people there cared at all about anything. Maybe he would hate Effie a little less than them, maybe not if she kept wearing dresses like that – pink and green today, always with the fucking pink.

"I've been doing this a lot longer than you have. Believe me, the first three years I did. It doesn't make a bit of difference, they died anyway. Unless they go in with some talent, they're never going to beat a career or even someone else from an outlying District who does." Effie chewed on her lip and looked down at the ground. "Pick one out of that bowl next year who has any kind of discernible talent and then I might consider trying to get them ready. Until then it's just wasted time that I could be drinking in." Effie sighed and eyed the bottle he was drinking out of. "You want some?" he asked, shaking it in her direction.

"No thank you, I'm sure it's covered in germs and I wouldn't want to catch anything." Her smile never faltered and he was actually impressed. "I'm going to bed now."

"Tell them to act as young as possible tomorrow at their interviews, people love a hopeless case. They'll send food if they need it because they'll feel sorry for them. And tell them to run away from the cornucopia no matter what's there. They're not going to survive if they go anywhere near it." Haymitch told her with a heavy sigh as she stood up. She paused for a second as though she was mentally noting down what he was telling her. She didn't thank him or say anything for that matter, she just turned on her heel and retreated to her room, and he liked her a lot more for that than he would have if she was grateful. They were going to die anyway; he was just trying to soothe the guilty conscience she was giving him by delaying the inevitable. He sighed again and drained the rest of his bottle quickly before he went to bed.

The boy was a disaster at the interviews and he was dead, or as good as anyway. Effie hadn't seemed surprised. The girl however had the audience in the palm of her hand – the pigtails Effie suggested, which were in fashion with children in the Capitol that year, were genius. She looked nine or ten, not twelve. They wouldn't quite make people think of her like she could be their child, people in the Capitol didn't think like that, but hopefully it was enough to touch a motherly or fatherly instinct inside some people. She had apparently touched one in Effie who cried when she said goodbye, whispering something in her ear.

"What did you say?" Haymitch couldn't stop himself from asking.

"Just what you told me to."

Haymitch told himself wouldn't watch the games with her, but Effie hadn't asked him to anyway. She made herself comfortable on the sofa and he sat at the dining table pretending he wasn't watching her out of the corner of his eye. She kept smoothing her hands over her skirt and he didn't know why he found that so irritating.

"Can you stop doing that?" Haymitch eventually hissed through gritted teeth and Effie turned to see him and gave a little smile.

"Oh, you're still here? Forgive me for not noticing, you're rather quiet when you're not drunkenly stumbling into the furniture." She turned back and he could just imagine the pleased little look she was wearing. She was quicker with a comeback than he'd expected her to be. She turned her attention back to the large screen she was preparing to watch the games on, and Haymitch readied himself for what was to come.

Their male tribute was the first dead. The girl ran from the cornucopia and into a boy from five. He snapped her neck on sight.

Effie sat very quietly for a second before she brought her knees up to her chin and rested her head on them. Haymitch took it upon himself to get up and switch the screen off, unable to be annoyed with her. He sat down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder, half expecting her to scream at him when she looked up. He should have predicted that she would be in tears; she seemed a very over-emotional person which was odd to him. People from the Capitol rarely showed any emotions at all, let alone ones that made them seem vulnerable, dare he say human. He allowed himself to put an arm around her and she cried on his shoulder like she was trying to purge herself of the guilt he was sure she felt for picking their names in the first place.

"Maybe next year." Effie sighed when she had calmed down a little. It was a phrase he would come to know as well as he knew her, something she would say every year which made them both feel a little better, not that Haymitch would ever admit that it helped him, until they actually found their victor.


	2. Chapter 2

Effie always preferred one tribute to the other every year that she was an escort, and her first year was no different. The little girl was called Susan, and Effie thought she suited the name, sweet but plain and unassuming. Effie wanted to bundle her up in blankets when she arrived in the Capitol she looked so shaken by the whole experience. Effie stayed positive and she said the words 'you never know, you might win it' so many times that both of the children looked, by the end of training, like they half-believed what she was saying.

She didn't like being an escort but then, it wasn't like she had asked for the job. Escorts were picked out of popular personalities in the Capitol. She supposed she should be flattered, after all, she was getting too old to model and she didn't want to end up like her mother, presenting the weather as exuberantly as it was possible too and drinking at home to cope with it.

She didn't like Haymitch Abernathy either. He was a rude, uncouth, drunk who was quite happy to see children die without even trying to help them. She must have been being punished for something, she had been placed in a District it was almost impossible to move out of and stuck with a man like that. So Effie didn't know which of them was more surprised that she ended up crying in his arms ten minutes after the games started, both of her tributes dead. She felt oddly comforted by him, knowing that she should have listened to him earlier, should have accepted that they were hopeless cases and not got her hopes up, not got attached to them.

"I wish I didn't care." Effie said softly.

"It's easier." he replied after a moment, and Effie wondered if he really believed that. He took his arm from around her shoulders and she missed the weight of it immediately, but she wasn't going to ask him to put it back.

Effie didn't smoke, but she smoked when one of her tributes died. She had tried cigarettes when smoking was in fashion for a few months and still liked it, more for the motions and deep breaths than anything else. She walked outside on to the balcony, comforted by smoking, by being up high, by the sight of her apartment building only a few blocks away. She was supposed to stay in the tribute centre until the end of the Games, but maybe she could ask permission and go home, on the guise of getting some more clothing, even just for a few hours. Surely she would be able to find some peace of mind within the walls of her own home? She decided then it would be tradition for her to have one smoke per dead tribute because it gave her an excuse to light up a second time. She wondered if Haymitch was watching her out there, but when she looked over her shoulder he was entirely preoccupied by the bottle he was nursing. If he was any indication of how things were going to go, this job was not going to get easier any time soon. She was already worried about the next year. She hoped and prayed that she picked someone who actually stood a chance.

"You smell like smoke." Haymitch complained when she walked back in. She shot him a glare.

"And you constantly smell like whiskey, but I haven't mentioned it until now."

"You're much nicer when other people are around." Effie smiled sweetly. She would never go so far as to be impolite to him, but she wouldn't resist getting a few digs in here and there, he was the kind of person who would think she was weak if she didn't. Besides, she was angry. She had failed, her tributes had died. Effie Trinket was not accustomed to failing.

"You'll be too hungover to remember this in the morning anyway." Effie said as she sat back down on the sofa. Haymitch gave her a look that asked why she was still there, but she ignored it. "You know I didn't watch the games when I was younger. My father wouldn't let me see the violence, he was probably the only parent in the Capitol who was concerned about that. I saw bits and pieces of course, heard about the winner, but I didn't watch it properly until I was in my teens. I didn't like it, but I still never found it as horrifying as this time. Seeing them before they go in…" She didn't have to finish. Haymitch had been in there, and he had been a mentor for years. She correctly guessed that he knew exactly how she felt.

"I guess if they don't ingrain it into you early you accidentally have a reaction to it besides hoping your favourite doesn't die."

Haymitch was indeed too hungover to remember they had even spoken in the morning, or he said he was anyway. Effie remembered. She went over it a hundred times in her head because even if Haymitch didn't like her, he did understand how she felt, and that was important.

Cashmere from District 1 won the games, and she was all smiles during the celebrations afterwards and Effie was amazed that a pretty face, blonde hair, and a soft voice were enough to make everyone forget that she had beheaded her own ally to secure the crown. Effie had watched it and every time she saw the young woman she saw the spurt of blood coming from the neck of the girl from District 4 that had been Cashmere's last opponent. The first night after she won, Effie had a nightmare that she woke up screaming from that she was in the place of the poor beheaded girl and the next day she found herself struggling from breath when she attended the victory party and had to shake Cashmere's hand. She had run outside as soon as all eyes were off her. She was surprised she made it out there without fainting, more surprised that Haymitch followed her.

"How can they just forget?" she asked him quietly. She already knew that nobody else was out there, but Haymitch checked anyway before he replied.

"That's just what happens, sweetheart." Her head was still spinning and she had to sit down on the steps outside because she was worried if she fell she would crack her head open. "You know, you might turn out to be good company after all if you keep hating this as much as you do now." She hated how much his approval pleased her.

One Hunger Games was enough to make Effie second guess the world she had grown up in, not that she would admit that out loud. In fact, in years to come she would get better at acting as though it excited her to be reaping children, to get to watch them fighting and dying, whispering 'chins up, smiles on' before she walked out anywhere the cameras might see her. It helped, but not much.


	3. Chapter 3

Effie Trinket did come back, Haymitch had known she would. Escorts did not get promoted by picking twelve year olds who both died before citizens watching the Games in the Capitol even learned their names.

That year in the Capitol black and white was in fashion and it was the most bearable Effie would ever look.

He didn't speak to her until breakfast the first morning on the train. He'd been drinking the previous night in the bar car which always seemed like a second home to him on those trains, and turned around several times thinking he heard her stupidly high heels clacking into the room only to be met with silence. He couldn't quite place how he felt about that.

He'd seen her on television once the previous year during Cashmere's victory tour. He'd watched the Capitol party that was held at the end for the first time ever and he really couldn't say why he'd done it. Looking at her he saw her looking as unsteady as she had at the party he had gone to with her at the end of the games, and it was quite reassuring that she obviously hadn't become any more comfortable with the Games than she had been when he was there. That was nearly six months ago though, maybe she'd had a rapid change of mind. Maybe she just didn't want to talk to him. He hated that he cared so much and drank more than usual trying to drown the thought.

She appeared at breakfast before the tributes she had chosen that year – one fourteen year old boy, one seventeen year old girl. He was a hopeless case, it was obvious, he was more spindly than the two they had last year and clearly terrified. She however was the daughter of the blacksmith, and she had some muscle behind her. She seemed unconvinced that she could win, but Effie could talk some self-belief into her. She'd get further than last years, he was fairly certain of that.

"Good morning!" Effie greeted him perkily and he tried not to groan as her accent grated on his hangover. She looked at him with pursed lips. "If you drank less the headaches would stop." He looked her right in the eye as he poured the contents of his hip flask in a cup that was likely supposed to be used for a hot drink.

"You stopping talking would have much the same effect." he told her. If Effie actually cared she didn't say anything, just poured herself out a coffee and went over to the sofa. She didn't eat in the mornings, her favourite phrase was: 'it's far too early for breakfast'. Breakfast for her occurred when it was nearly lunchtime and she had been awake for several hours. Haymitch didn't eat because he usually woke up hungover and nauseous and if he ate too much he might soak up some of the alcohol he had spent time drinking.

"Do you have a plan this year?" she asked him from where she was reclining. He sighed. If she had wanted to talk to him she should have just sat at the damn table like any normal person would have. These little rituals that she had were ridiculous, and she would engage in them every year. He would come to realise she didn't do it to be difficult, that if just made her squirm if she didn't adhere to the ritual she had created during her first year.

"I can do something with her." he sighed eventually. "But not if she keeps believing she's as good as dead." He wished Effie would just give up on them. He couldn't tell whether she was determined to have one of the survive because she actually cared what happened to them or if she just wanted the prestige of being an escort to District 12 who had managed to pick a victor anyway. He was fairly sure it was the first because despite the make-up and the wigs and the overly complicated dresses she was the most decent person from the Capitol he had ever met – not that saying that meant much – and she did seem to care more about her tributes than her job. In fact, she loathed her job. The only reason Haymitch could think of that she might want to get promoted – which she never would – was so that she might have a better chance of seeing one of her tributes alive again by the end of the games.

"I'll talk to her." Effie promised. He could hear her trying not to sound delighted that he was helping, and he was half tempted to take the offer back and likely would have if he hadn't known it would induce a flood of tears from her and that to get her to shut up he would just promise to help again.

That evening Effie had talked to the girl for hours. They were in the train lounge along with him but he couldn't hear their conversation. Effie managed to make the terrified girl laugh, and not just on one occasion. She had sent the young girl off to bed with a hug.

"In her own words 'I bend metal with a hammer, I could easily use it as a weapon'. I think she's going to try at least." Effie seemed pleased with herself.

He wondered if she felt bad that she had already given up on the boy. He thought then that she might not be that good, she still had the Capitol mentality that some people in the games were more disposable than others, but he knew if he mentioned it with his track record for giving up on tributes before they had even been pulled from the reaping balls it would be the height of hypocrisy.

"You don't show your skills in training." Haymitch instructed her. "Surprise them in the arena when you can crack their head open with minimal effort, don't make yourself a target. Don't look weak, you need to slip through the cracks."

She followed his advice to the letter. She managed a 9 in training, which was the highest anyone from District 12 had managed in the whole time he had been mentoring them. Maybe there was something to be said for trying. He liked Effie a lot more because she didn't say 'I told you so', she only thanked him for trying this time and went to bed, apparently needing her beauty sleep before interview day. He pointed out that she wasn't the one who would be on camera but she ignored him.

She was developing a knack for ignoring him when he didn't say what she wanted him to.

Effie, Haymitch discovered that year when she was watching the interviews with him, had a remarkable knack for knowing exactly who would win every year, although she would always preface her guesses with 'if it's not one of ours then it will be…' to keep her own hopes up. The second she saw Finnick Odair in his interview, charismatic, handsome, and apparently good with a weapon if his 11 in training was anything to go by, she leant over to Haymitch and declared the winner would be him. Haymitch himself had his money on the girl from District 2 who seemed completely ruthless and scored a 12. Effie had just shaken her head. Finnick had obviously thought she was competition too because she was the first one he killed, although not before she had herself killed the boy from District 12.

Effie smoked, he drank, Effie cried a little because she would never manage to be detached enough from her tributes not to cry when they died, but neither of him remembered his name the next year.

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